Happy Birthday Facebook!
Back in 1983 when I turned 5, I remember celebrating my birthday with around eight of my classmates (can’t remember a single one of them) in my local Wimpy burger restaurant in Wealdstone High Street, Harrow, Middlesex.
It was a lovely affair by all accounts and I think Mr Wimpy even turned up to present us all with branded goodie bags. Ah… the good ole’ days!
Why this sudden trip down memory lane? Well today is the day that Facebook turns five. Yes, the world’s favourite social network has only been in our lives for five years. A pre-Facebook world is as much a distant memory as what I chose from the kiddie’s Wimpy menu back in 1983.
Image courtesy of Facebook
On Facebook’s official blog, Mark Zuckerberg marks the milestone birthday with these words:
Tomorrow is Facebook’s 5th birthday. This is a happy occasion for Facebook, but much more significant to the Facebook team is the fact that over 150 million people around the world are using Facebook to connect with the people in their lives. Facebook was founded in 2004 to give people the tools to engage and understand the world around them. We are glad and humbled that so many people are using Facebook in this way.
While we at Facebook make products that enable people to share information efficiently, Facebook is mostly the product of the people who use it. Without you and the connections you make to others, the products we create wouldn’t have much meaning. So we feel fortunate to have all of you with us. To express our appreciation, we’ve created a “Thank You” gift, which will be available tomorrow in the Facebook Gift Shop for you to to give freely to others. In the spirit of celebrating connections between people, we encourage you to use this gift to give thanks to your friends, colleagues and family members with whom you are connected on Facebook.
Since its founding, one of the constants of Facebook is that it has continuously evolved to make it easier to share. To give you a sense of how the site has changed, we dug up a few images of how Facebook used to look—you can see them here. Building and moving quickly for five years hasn’t been easy, and we aren’t finished. The challenge motivates us to keep innovating and pushing technical boundaries to produce better ways to share information.
The culture of the Internet has also changed pretty dramatically over the past five years. Before, most people wouldn’t consider sharing their real identities online. But Facebook has offered a safe and trusted environment for people to interact online, which has made millions of people comfortable expressing more about themselves.
Why is it important to us to keep building better ways for people to share information? Enabling efficient sharing is important because it makes the world more open, and this gives everyone a voice to express ideas and initiate change.
As we celebrate Facebook’s 5th birthday, we continue to work hard to evolve Facebook and make it as simple as possible to communicate with and understand the people and entities that matter to you.
At the start of this year, Facebook declared to the world that it had reached another milestone: 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. That’s crazy.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg aged 5
When I was 5…
- I had about ten good mates [Facebook has +150 million]
- I spoke three languages (English, Gujerati and Cookie Monster) [Facebook speaks 35 different languages]
- I had never been abroad (unless you count Wales) [Facebook is available in over 170 different countries and territories]
- I spent most of my freetime playing with lego [Today, globally more than 3 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day]
- My mum took photos of me and my chums in Wimpy on her vintage Nikon 1970′s camera. The photos are stuck in my parents’ attic somewhere smelling of squirrel wee and dust [More than 850 million photos upload photos to Facebook each month]
- I was the third tallest boy in my class [If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria]
I have to say that Facebook has come a hell of a long way in five years and has changed the way in which we connect as individuals. I personally have used Facebook to catch up with old schoolfriends, seek employment, connect with colleagues (past and present), sell in PR stories to journalists, give my clients a space to grow a community, link up with like-minded people from across the world, support the plight of monks in Burma, upload and share my holiday photos and to organise invitation lists for parties (phew!).
The most impressive thing about Facebook is that my girlfriend’s 84 year old French grandmother has heard of it. Seriously – that’s what you call ubiquity.
Today I was reading an article which stated that the fastest growing demographic for Facebook is women over the age of fifty-five. That’s my mum’s demographic. Anything that can take people like my mum (highly suspicious of technology) and connect them online has to be a good thing, right?
The Facebook Company Timeline:
2008
- AprilFacebook launches Facebook Chat
Facebook releases Translation application to 21 additional languages - MarchFacebook updates privacy controls to include Friend List privacy
Facebook launches in German - FebruaryFacebook launches in Spanish and French
- JanuaryFacebook co-sponsors Presidential Debates with ABC News
2007
- NovemberFacebook launches Facebook Ads
- OctoberFacebook reaches over 50 million active users
Facebook launches Facebook Platform for Mobile
Facebook and Microsoft expand advertising deal to cover international markets; Microsoft takes a $240 million equity stake in Facebook - JulyFacebook acquires startup Parakey
- MayFacebook launches Marketplace application for classified listings
Facebook hosts F8 event to launch Facebook Platform
Facebook Platform launches with 65 developer partners and over 85 applications - AprilFacebook reaches 20 million active users
Facebook updates site design and adds network portals - MarchFacebook reaches over 2 million active Canadian users and 1 million active UK users
- FebruaryVirtual gift shop launches as a feature
2006
- DecemberFacebook reaches more than 12 million active users
- NovemberShare feature added on Facebook, simultaneously launched on over 20 partner sites
- SeptemberNews Feed and Mini-Feed are introduced with additional privacy controls
Facebook expands registration so anyone can join - AugustFacebook development platform launches
Notes application is introduced
Facebook and Microsoft form strategic relationship for banner ad syndication - MayFacebook expands to add work networks
- AprilFacebook raises $27.5 million from Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners and others
Facebook Mobile feature launches
2005
- DecemberFacebook reaches more than 5.5 million active users
- OctoberPhotos is added as an application
Facebook begins to add international school networks - SeptemberFacebook expands to add high school networks
- AugustThe company officially changes its name to Facebook from thefacebook.com
- MayFacebook raises $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners;
Facebook grows to support more than 800 college networks
2004
- DecemberFacebook reaches nearly 1 million active users
- SeptemberGroups application is added; the Wall is added as a Profile feature
- JuneFacebook moves its base of operations to Palo Alto, Calif.
- MarchFacebook expands from Harvard to Stanford, Columbia and Yale
- FebruaryMark Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin launch Facebook from their Harvard dorm room
Happy birthday Facebook!
(you can find me on Facebook here)
Further reading:
Mashable: Facebook Turns 5; You Get Free Gifts
Pocket-Lint: Five Facebook facts for its 5th birthday
TechCrunch: On The Eve Of Its Fifth Birthday, A Facebook Design Retrospective
Comment time…
I’ve got three questions for you:
- How has Facebook changed the way in which you connect to the world around you?
- What will Facebook look like in five years’ time?
- What will Twitter look like on its fifth birthday?
raxlakhani: Blog back up now. Comments were deactivated so apologies to all of you who tried to leave something. Try again! http://tinyurl.com/cz2ngt 02/04/09 04:01pm- raxlakhani: How has Facebook changed the way in which you connect to the world around you? http://tinyurl.com/cz2ngt - comments in blog please! 02/04/09 09:24am
- raxlakhani: @Pocketlint @seotoknow @StartupGuru @jhorsager @nickburcher @TechPassion http://tinyurl.com/cz2ngt - your comments most welcome! 02/04/09 09:07am
- raxlakhani: @nAODI @sleon @gschan @rajivdoshi @halwebguy @seray @chumsoben @Jordanbrown5 http://tinyurl.com/cz2ngt - your comments most welcome! 02/04/09 09:01am
- raxlakhani: Happy Birthday Facebook! http://tinyurl.com/cz2ngt - Where will Twitter be on its 5th Birthday? 02/04/09 08:51am
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Great post and thank you for pinging me for my thoughts on Twitter. I would have most likely missed reading this article or not been motivated enough to leave a comment. Smart move
I thought about your 3 questions and here is my response to each of them:
1. Facebook is one of the best ways I stay connected to the friends, companies, brands, tv shows that I am most interested in following. They have brought my entire network closer which is an amazing thing. It’s done this because it enabled people to share things in easy way.
2. Facebook will be completely connected with applications, web sites, devices, any interactive experience you have can be then shared with everyone. The process has started with Facebook Connect and I think we will see greater adoption within a 5 year period. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess but I personally would like to see ecommerce/payment platform built on top of Facebook.
3. Twitter progresses at much slower pace then Facebook so I don’t think Twitter itself will be very different then it is now. I know monetization will be important to them so we could see Ads or Twitter Pro by then, but I am not sure. That said, Twitter’s API allows for great flexibility so it will be up to outside developers to leverage that and push how we interact and use Twitter by their 5th birthday.
Happy birthday Facebook.
Great post. What i think is that FB will not be around in 10 years in its current form. it will have been bought by a giant like microsoft or google (or micro-google!) and will incorporate email, VOIP, TV, etc.
I am a big fan of fb. not sure about twitter.
1. Facebook has allowed me to keep in touch with friends and family as I moved from Brazil to Canada to Italy. I also ‘collect’ friends along the way. I’ve made great contacts who I’ll stay in touch with forever.
2. In 5 years, Facebook will hopefully still be around but I think it will be bought out by someone soon. Most of the world will have a profile and every company will connect to customers through their fan pages.
3. Twitter will definitely need to have more than 140 characters to go mainstream.
Facebook has sold out. Big time!
It’s gone from being a photo storage site to being a spam tool for companies.
I’ve gone back to email.
Twitter is interesting but again – lots of spam.
How has Facebook changed the way in which you connect to the world around you?
It gives me tools to share stuff like videos and photos. I can let people know exactly what I’m doing, with who and how.
I use facebook on my cell phone which means that i can always stay in touch. But i’m not real friends with the majority of my facebook community. a lot are just people i met once at a party or through a friend.
What will Facebook look like in five years’ time?
I hope it won’t change too much. i like facebook chat but it it a bit buggy. hope they sort this out.
What will Twitter look like on its fifth birthday?
don’t use it.
Not sure if it is at all predictble where Facebook will be on it’s 10th birthday. Who could have predicted it’s rapid growth and world domination over the past half decade?!
Facebook has been brilliant at introducing a new method of communicating to a mainstream audience. Granted, we were all familiar with email but the concept of sharing photos, videos, links, etc. has been made popular via Facebook. It succeeded where sites like Flickr and MySpace failed – it made things simple.
As for Twitter, it is making conversation even simpler. By stripping down the rules of engagement. 140 characters, no detailed sign-up, limiting communication to text-only, etc.
It will undoubtedly develop, adding more complex features in the same way Facebook has but what makes Twitter so endearing today should stay at the heart of any product development.
Like the blog, by the way.
Hi Rax
Loving the Wimpy references! I remember going to a Wimpy birthday party in Edmonton. Crazy days
Facebook used to be my main ‘virtual hangout’ but I’m spending less time there in favour of Twitter. People are already moving on to FriendFeed as their main hub. I think aggregation tools like FriendFeed is the future. Combines Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, etc all into one.
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